The effect of a ‘conceptualizable’ agent on the use of transitive and intransitive constructions in L2 Japanese

In this chapter, we examine the acquisition of Japanese transilive/intransitive verb alternation by Chinese learners, and in particular, how a ‘conceptualizable’ external cause (Ju, 2000) affects learners’ choice. The objective is to investigate how the presence of a perceivable agent and the negative versus affirmative form of the verb affect their cholic among transitive, intransitive, passive, and potential forms, and thus whether the tendency to use passive forms, which has been observed in L2 English, would also be observed in L2 Japanese. We found that Chinese learners of Japanese tend to use more transitive and passive forms under the externally-caused affirmative condition, and more potential forms under the externally-caused negative condition. We argue that the diggiculty in choosing these different verb forms in Japanese can best be explained in terms of event conceptualization, and account consistent with Ju’s (2000) account explaining overpassivization in L2 English. Copyright © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.